Choosing an Internet Host for Your Site

Search Engine Optimisation is the process we go through to ensure that Google and all the other Search Engines will show our site on page one of any appropriate search.

So I’m a newcomer to the web choosing a provider, what do I want or need from my package?

Well there’s no fixed nomenclature so we need to look carefully: they may call what we are looking for Website Tools or Marketing Tools and they may or may not be obvious on the screens they use to sell you one package or another, so phone them and ask!

What do we want to know?

Do they submit your site to the search engines, if so how often, and do they charge a fee for doing so. If your site is not ‘submitted’ it may take many months for Google to find it. It may never find it.

Do they help you to identify suitable keywords or check that the keywords you have linked to your metatags are likely to produce results for you?

Do they check whether your chosen keywords are prominent enough in your text?

Search Engines are temperamental; does your host check if you have broken any of their arcane rules?

Will it check out the links you make from one page to another or one site to another work?

All this is vitally important to the future success of your online venture, and definitely worth a few pounds, dollars or shekels a month to secure. Cheapest is not always best and if one potential host cannot provide what you need another certainly can and will.

You are the customer; get what you need, accept no compromises. Good SEO is essential. Eventually you will have to focus your energies on achieving a degree of prominence for your site but with the support of a good internet host it should be achieved without too much effort or expenditure.

Existing businesses entering the on-line business environment to extend their existing Clientele

New businesses looking to combine a bricks-and-mortar business with on-line trading